Managing culture change

1. © University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
NANO TOOLS FOR LEADERS®
FIVE STEPS FOR MANAGING CULTURE CHANGE
NanoTools for Leaders®
are fast, effective leadership tools
that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes —
with the potential to significantly impact your success as a
leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you
lead.
Contributor: Sigal Barsade, PhD, Joseph Frank Bernstein
Professor of Management, The Wharton School, University
of Pennsylvania.
THE GOAL:
Don’t leave culture change to chance — create and manage it.
NANOTOOL:
As companies adapt to changes in markets, consumer expectations, and varied and new regulations, they are being
forced to develop new strategies and change their structures. However, for those changes to be successful the organiza-
tion’s culture needs to be in alignment with its strategy and its structure — a process that often requires a culture change.
Some leaders believe that cultural change is too complex to be managed — or that it takes too long to yield measurable
results to make it worth dealing with. This can be good news for wiser leaders who understand that cultural change can
be planned and managed: they can gain an advantage over their competition.
To manage culture change, the first step is to observe and understand your organization’s culture as it is now, and to
determine which values will best align with your strategy and structure. Once you decide what your values need to be,
design a Cultural Change Plan using the action steps below.
ACTION STEPS:
Driving cultural change requires active and intentional leadership. Whether you are changing the culture of a team, a divi-
sion, or an entire enterprise, use these five steps to manage the process:
1. Quantitatively measure your current cultural values. The first step to culture change is knowing where your cur-
rent culture stands; that is, what employees believe your organization’s current values are. This will allow you to get
a good idea of how much change is needed and enable accountability and the ability to track your culture change
more precisely over time.
2. Intentionally align culture, strategy, and structure. Be sure that the culture change fits with the firm’s or group’s
business strategy and that both fit with the organization’s structure (its formal systems and policies). Reconsider
formal reporting relationships, job descriptions, selection and recruiting practices, performance appraisal, reward
or compensation structures, and training and development. Supporting change and innovation both structurally and
culturally have been found to be critical to the success of culture change initiatives. Make changes where appropri-
ate to support the new culture.

2. © University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
3. Ensure staff and stakeholder participation. Change can’t succeed without the meaningful involvement of many
people throughout the organization. Participation can range from individually offering ideas, solutions, and reactions
to concepts, to taking part in team meetings to design and build the new culture and organizational structure. Use a
balanced approach, keeping in mind that input from a wide range of people can generate excitement and motivation
to change, but make sure that you have a separate change structure in place (e.g., change sponsor, change commit-
tee) that can make timely and clear decisions to prevent an ambiguous vision or delay key actions.
4. Communicate and demonstrate the change, again and again and again and then … again. Frequent, redun-
dant, and copious communication — both upward and downward — is necessary during the change process. Use
words and actions to convey the vision of the desired future, and repeat your message much more often than you
think is necessary. Most leaders greatly underestimate how many repetitions it takes for a message to sink in. Role
model appropriate behaviors by demonstrating your constant commitment to the future state and provide a vivid
image of what it will look and feel like. Use new language or metaphors to create memorable images (one long-
term care organization described its facilities as a collection of neighborhoods or houses rather than an institution).
Leaders clearly and visibly dedicated to change have been found to be one of the singular success factors of culture
change.
5. Manage the emotional response — yours and your employees. Leadership effectiveness in times of change has
been found to be critically related to the use of emotional intelligence. Employee emotions have a strong influence
on how they approach change, and leaders need to be as analytical and strategize as much about their emotional
messages as their cognitive ones. Pay attention to and read others’ emotions, and empathize and engage in per-
spective-taking to better predict how employees will respond to the change. Manage the anxiety, periods of anger,
and need for emotional regulation that can naturally arise at critical points in a culture change. See the Emotional
Contagion Nano Tool for ideas. Most importantly, always role model the change you are trying to create — both
emotionally and cognitively.
HOW COMPANIES USE IT:
• When Ford took over the Jaguar company, they implemented a culture change to better compete given the changes
in the car industry. Specifically, they wanted an organizational culture that moved from traditional manufacturing
techniques and values to new values of flexibility, initiative, and responsibility. To engage in this culture change,
Jaguar first assessed the employees’ current beliefs and attitudes to know where things stood. They then en-
gaged in an extensive set of multiple communication and participation strategies, including three-day management
workshops about the change; union workshops; participation of both management and union together to best
implement the change; supervisor workshops; selection and training of a cadre of internal facilitators to cascade
the culture change through the organization; and a two-day workshop for all 3000 employees, led by the internal
facilitators, to understand the new culture needed to match the new strategy, and the structural supports for this
culture. Through extensive communication and participation, employees were able to more effectively understand
and accept the culture change.
• The importance of leader role modeling can be seen by the head of a department in a public sector organization in
which there was poor morale, no mutual trust, and a strong desire to leave the organization. The leader wanted to
change the culture to one with an aggressive work ethic, increased teamwork, and positive emotions and enthu-
siasm. For his first seven months, he personally demonstrated these values frequently and consistently. He also
built in structural supports, including a team identity, awards, celebrations, integration of teamwork in performance

3. © University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School
appraisal criteria, and changes in the physical structure of the department to better support interaction as a team.
Within a year, the department went from people leaving the department, to more people trying to transfer in than
there were positions available.
• See the Additional Resources links below for more examples and research findings.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
• “Managing Organizational Culture Change: The Case for Long-Term Care,
” Donald E. Gibson, Sigal G. Barsade,
Journal of Social Work in Long-Term Care, Vol. 2, No. 1 / 2, 2003.
• “What’s Love Got To Do With It? A Longitudinal Study of the Culture of Companionate Love and Employee and
Client Outcomes in the Long-Term Care Setting,
” Sigal G. Barsade, Olivia A. O’Neill, Administrative Science
Quarterly, 2014 (forthcoming).
• Sigal Barsade is faculty director of High-Potential Leaders: Accelerating Your Impact, and teaches in numerous other
Executive Education programs, including the Advanced Management Program, Leading Organizational Change, and
Women’s Executive Leadership: Business Strategies for Success.
ABOUT NANOTOOLS:
NanoTools for Leaders® was conceived and developed by Deb Giffen, MCC, Director of Innovative Learning Solutions at
Wharton Executive Education. It is jointly sponsored by Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership
and Change Management, Wharton Professor of Management Michael Useem, Director. NanoTools’ Academic Director is
John Paul MacDuffie, Wharton Associate Professor of Management, and Director of the Program on Vehicle and Mobility
Innovation (PVMI) at Wharton’s Mack Institute for Innovation Management.